Items related to Blueprints for a Barbed Wire Canoe
'The rain fell hard and unending on the roof. All the ghosts of ur were sleeping. The night was as dark as a whale's belly. She passed by swiftly, cried out softly; I wasn't listening, I couldn't have heard.' Bram has a reluctant story to tell. Excavating common objects from the mullock heap of a failed housing estate, he records the lives fo those who lived there. One-eyed Michael, fencing contractor and ideologue, his daughter Jodie, Slug the real estate agent, Layland from the Ministry and Tony the bricklayer-in-waiting: these are just some of the players in a laconic comedy of circumstance. Prize-winning short fiction writer Wayne Macauley has made, as Peter Craven has noted, 'something almost like allegory.' His compulsive telling ensnares us in an escalating series of remarkable events. An old leather satchel holds the documents for the fatal vessel of the title... Beguilingly simple, eccentric and original, 'Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe' is a fable of ownership, and an elegy for a dream.
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About the Author:
Wayne Macauley is a Melbourne writer whose stories have been published in Meanjin, Westerly, Overland, Arena, HQ and other magazines. He was the winner of The Age Short Story Competition in 1995 and was anthologised in Best Australian Stories 2001. He has written extensively for the theatre over many years and was a founding member of the award-winning site-specific performance company, the Institute of Complex Entertainment. He has recently held an Australia Council grant to complete a collection of short fiction. Black Pepper will be publishing his second novel, 'Caravan Story', in 2006.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
It had rained for three days solid, in some places the creek had already burst its banks; she'd waited for nightfall, a night with no moon. No-one can say how spectacularly unsuccessful the launching was, no-one was there on that dark night to bear witness. Though the remnants of the canoe were found the following day wrapped crazily around an overhanging branch almost a kilometre downstream, there is little point speculating on how much of the journey was made on the surface as hoped and how much of it tumbling in the putrid waters beneath. The body itself outdistanced the canoe by a kilometre and a half and was recovered two days later wedged between the root of a tree and the grey mud of the bank. It wore, ridiculously, the uniform prescribed; the rabbit skin hat still held in place by a chin-strap, the jacket still neatly buttoned.
I was asked into town to sign some papers and I drove there dazed and shaken. Patterson himself seemed genuinely upset. It was, we both knew, a strange and futile end to a strange and futile saga. Little was said, little could be said; I saw the body, identified her as Jodie and drove back home with the image of her blood-drained face and quiet closed-forever eyes before me.
The rain wouldn't stop, it came down in endless thin silver ropes, pelting the roof and bursting out of the gutters; it was washing everything, washing everything clean, the whole sad sorry story, across the paddocks and ruins, from trickles to rivulets to the creek into the far-off sea. That night, as I sat down at my table and prepared to break the news to Michael, I knew, at last, that my days here were done.
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- PublisherBlack Pepper
- Publication date2004
- ISBN 10 187604442X
- ISBN 13 9781876044428
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages160
- Rating
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Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe [Signed]
Published by
Black Pepper, Melbourne
(2004)
ISBN 10: 187604442X
ISBN 13: 9781876044428
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Book Description Pictorial Wraps. Condition: Very Good. First Edition. SIGNED & INSCRIBED by the Australian author in black ink on half-title page: "15/12/03. To - & -. With Compliments from the Author (and lots of love and best wishes), Wayne". Cover drawings by Ian Bracegirdle. Barely noticeable unobtrusive tiny stain to upper corner of inner margin, otherwise a very nice clean tight solid softcover copy. ix + 147pp. Scarce signed copy. SB-43. Signed by Author(s). Seller Inventory # 034644
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Blueprints for a Barbed Wire Canoe
Published by
Black Pepper
(2004)
ISBN 10: 187604442X
ISBN 13: 9781876044428
Used
Paperback
Quantity: 1
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Very Good. VG, light shelfwear. Seller Inventory # A-30972
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